


Options

by sanctum_c



Series: Tifa Week 2020 [5]
Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26920078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctum_c/pseuds/sanctum_c
Summary: Avalanche have a plan to prevent Shinra's damage to the Planet. But is it the only choice?
Series: Tifa Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827742
Kudos: 1





	Options

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt '“Down here in the atmosphere, garbage and city lights, you’ve gone to save your tired soul. You’ve gone to save their lives.” - somewhere out there - our lady peace.'

Marlene changed everything.

Meeting with, becoming part of Avalanche was nothing more than revenge for Tifa at first. Sephiroth had robbed her of her father and her home. She wanted to retort in kind, inflict pain on the man who carved a further indignity into her chest with his sword. But the man was no more, perished in unclear circumstances some years prior.

But there was more at work than simply Sephiroth. The company who declared him as the first SOLDIER, who deployed the Mako reactor onto the slopes of Mount Nibel. The device’s unquenchable thirst would consume the delicate Mako fountain given enough time. Sephiroth might be no more but those who gave rise to him, who championed him, who sent him – of all people – to fix a fault with the reactor remained.

They still existed. The ruled in the city hanging above her, their reactors here; more massive, hungrier and spilling the foul scent of processed Mako into the air, polluting the ground in a rainbow of by-products, leeching the goodness from the ground. Perhaps nature could take root within Midgar if not for the endless drain. And the plates.

Avalanche clarified, amplified, and confirmed Tifa’s own tenuous conclusion from her penultimate and fateful hike up Mount Nibel.

No matter what Shinra insisted; Mako was far from limitless. The lifeblood of the Planet; Shinra drew it from the ground, processed it in their reactors and sold the resulting electricity to the world. For comforts. For living. Banish the dark, banish the cold, banish the heat. Entertainment.

All for a low cost per month and the destruction of the land beneath their feet.

The dynamic needed to change. Shinra ignored entreaties, ignored pleas. Ignored appeals to better judgements. The reactors continued on ceaselessly. No one could be sure how to calculate the longevity or life-span of the Planet. They could conjecture from the spread of the lifeless ground emanating out from Midgar. But all they could say for sure was the Planet was dying. Proving an assertion was near impossible for them.

But Avalanche believed. Tifa believed. And soon the idea hatched; if Shinra’s hand would not shut down the reactors, someone else’s would need to. And they needed to ensure no one could reactivate them after.

Jessie broached the idea of the bomb in response. Perilously few other solutions to take a reactor out of commission. Silence followed her suggestion. Striking back at Shinra came via increasingly aggressive words and demonstrations. Ever more risky with Shinra’s de factor control of the city. But to go this extra step; the whole-sale destruction of a reactor was beyond previous considerations.

They would keep casualties to a minimum. They would strike at night when the staff was low. Do everything they could to get people out of the way.

The idea did not sit right; Barret called for a pause, for a plea for other ideas. His determination to punish Shinra burned like Tifa’s. But this extreme- They needed to think. Needed to plan. To see if Jessie could put together something capable of demolishing a construction so huge.

Tifa remained in a quandary. The goal was laudable; but was the method sound? Was their truly no other way around it?

The meeting broke up and Avalanche re-ascended to Seventh Heaven proper; Tifa opened the bar and prepared for her job.

And wound up watching Marlene. Barret took her to one of the tables to go through her lessons for the day. Adamant she would receive education, would have choices for her future in the absence of schooling in the slums. Tifa had never had a school either, but Father ensured she learned all she could. So she could have options.

A whirlwind of thoughts and confusions crystallised. Marlene should have options.

Should have a childhood like Tifa’s and be able to run in the open air under the sun and the blue sky. Not forced into the shadowy world of Midgar, one of only two survivors of a terrible fire at Shinra’s hands. Should have a world to look forward to, not inherit a lifeless husk because those who came before her thought only of their lives and drained the goodness from the world before she could truly live in it.

If Shinra was not stopped, if the reactors were not shut down, what kind of life would Marlene – would any slum children – ever be able to aspire to? The hopes and dreams of those around them were to ascend to the Upper Plate and luxury; still under the thumb of Shinra, but able to ignore the penalties and hard-ships of those who toiled beneath them. Not a future for Marlene either.

She should live, should never have to worry about Shinra or Mako production.

The objections faded away. Tifa would support Jessie’s plan. Support nothing less than the eradication of Mako power.


End file.
